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Obscurity, much?/Anime and Manga
Pokémon has its own page. *The Tokyopop version of the Deadman Wonderland manga is so obscure, it took the popularity of the anime to make the English version of the manga popular again (this time via Viz Media, thus putting Tokyopop's version into this trope). *Maple Town is the one true obscure anime among otakus. It aired on Nickelodeon for a while, long before the sale of the English dub when Saban Entertainment was sold to Disney. As of 2016, Disney no longer owns the rights. **Look at MyAnimeList.net. The main character has only 3 member favorites as of 2017. That's less than a seventh of Ruby's member favorites. *Magical girl anime series tend to get this from time to time, the few exceptions either becoming really popular outside Japan or being outright deconstructions of the whole genre: **Powerpuff Girls Z is semi-obscure in the United States. You would have to be a true Powerpuff Girls fan with internet to watch the show in the US. **The Nelvana dub of Cardcaptor Sakura. Need I say more? **Jewelpet outside Japan, and Americans who know about it found out about it online. The reason for this trope happening to that anime is because of Sega and Sanrio being afraid of getting sued for making a franchise similar to Webkinz, a popular franchise in America at the time. Despite all of this, plushies managed to cross the ocean, but are mostly limited to Sanrio stores nowadays. ***Speaking of Jewelpet, name any Sanrio franchise that isn't Hello Kitty, Show by Rock!!, or (as of January 2018) Sanrio Danshi, and eight times of ten, it will be obscure in America. ***Concerning Jewelpet characters, any Jewelpet not named Ruby, Sapphie, Garnet, Diana, or Labra tend to be semi-obscure at best, although the majority of them appeared in at least one Jewelpet video game (though the games were only released in Japan thanks to the above). **Possibly one of the reasons why Shugo Chara! never got an official English dub, despite getting an official North American release. *Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. In Canada. Maybe putting it on Super Channel wasn't such a good idea. *Soul Eater Not! is less popular than the original manga. The fact that Funimation even dubbed it in English is surprising. *Speaking of Funimation, it acquired some pretty obscure titles; it'd take an entire page to list the examples. *Beyblade's current season was, as of October 2016, fairly obscure in the US. Discovery Family used to have a higher chance of picking the US run up than Disney XD before XD got to it before Discovery did (however, Yo-kai Watch airs on Disney XD US, not Discovery Family, despite Hasbro licensing the anime). This is despite the more recent Beyblade anime seasons airing on Cartoon Network. **As of October 22nd, 2016, Discovery Family has no chance of airing the anime at all, as Disney XD in the US picked up the anime, ironically also averting Cartoon Network Isn't Teletoon due to the fact that Beyblade: Burst also airs on Disney XD Canada. *At this point, this can apply to Neon Alley, as they were replaced by a normal Viz Media website. *The Adventures of the Little Koala's English dub, which aired on Nick Jr. back in the 1980s, wasn't as widely received as Nick's other anime series and it shared the same amount of obscurity as other anime series aired on Nick Jr. It wasn't until Dragon Ball Z Kai began its Nicktoons run that Nick was able to acquire more well-known anime series (mainly Yu-Gi-Oh!). *Crayon Shin-chan has the Vitello and Phuuz dubs, which are completely obscure (but not completely forgotten). The Funimation dub used to fall under Pop culture, but is now semi-obscure with an outrageous cult following (part of the reason being a lot of the technology shown in the Funimation dub being outdated). *Shuriken and Pleats only lasted two volumes. Combine that with it not getting an anime, and it's semi-obscure (but at least has a bigger internet following than Chloe). *The One-Punch Man webcomic outside Japan, ironically enough. *Attack on Titan: Junior High doesn't have as big a cult following as the manga it parodies. However, it ended up with an anime too, which in turn was dubbed by Funimation. *Prior to Spike Chunsoft revealing it to be part of the Danganronpa franchise / canon, Danganronpa Gaiden: Killer Killer was this. *The Funimation Channel itself fell into obscurity (getting rebranded in the process). *Bakugan is fairly obscure in its country of origin, but is really popular among anime fans, especially in Canada and the United States. **It got to the point where the final season of the original series only aired in international markets. *GoLion within its native Japan, though it's well-known as Voltron outside Japan. *Macross, aside from Robotech, Macross II, and Macross Plus, is somewhat obscure in America, due to a mess of legal issues. **Doesn't stop AKB0048 from being released in America, though. *Name any pre-Transformers: Car Robots anime based on the Transformers franchise that got an English dub. Chances are the dub is completely obscure, if not completely forgotten, within America. Starting with Car Robots, this was averted. *Sugarbunnies is obscure among English-speaking anime fans, to the point where the anime doesn't have English subs. Not helping is that Sugarbunnies is a Sanrio franchise. *Some anime aired on Toonami are somewhat forgettable. However, Toonami itself averts this, to the point where Adult Swim gave it a reboot in 2012. *Studio Trigger, despite becoming so popular that the first six Trigger anime series even got an English dub, has hints of this: **At least one of its shorts were never localized and thus the characters' only Western debut was in Space Patrol Luluco. **Miss Trigger herself in the West, prior to Space Patrol Luluco getting localized. **When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace: The light novels and manga adaptation never got an English release and thus are completely obscure in the Anglosphere, though the anime was licensed and even got an English dub. **Kill la Kill: Though the anime and OVA avert this, there's at least one character within the anime that became obscure thanks to being overlooked. **Little Witch Academia within Japan (prior to the TV anime, at least). LWA's sequel OVA was funded almost entirely by fans in the Anglosphere, and every LWA OVA (and the TV anime) has seen a dub, for the most part. *By the time 4Kids Entertainment declared bankruptcy in 2011, the only anime dubs done by them that were not the infamous One Piece dub, yet still known, were, as follows: Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Sonic X, and Kirby: Right Back at Ya! (and that's only counting their anime licenses). However, Pokémon USA has since snatched up the rights to the Pokémon anime and 4Kids' Kirby license expired. Of these four, only Sonic X was snatched up by Saban Brands (and later, Discotek Media). **The main reason for 4Kids' bankruptcy was because of a lawsuit filed by TV Tokyo (yes, that TV Tokyo) over Yu-Gi-Oh!, whose license has since been acquired by 4K Media. *Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh!, "Season Zero" ended up being a rare example of an unlicensed anime that actually inverted this. Unfortunately, unless you count the "joke translation" of the movie and a couple of episodes, the series never got dubbed into English. *Anime in general in South Korea prior to the 1990s due to South Korea's historical ban on Japanese media. Think about it- the US only discouraged people from getting exposed to Japanese media prior to the Allied occupation of Japan at the end of World War II, while South Korea outright banned anything from Japan for decades after World War II. And while we're on this topic, the first anime the United States got was Astro Boy, dated from 1963. The first anime series South Korea got were from the 80s/90s and largely removed Japanese references from the dubs. *Basically anything by Fujiko Fujio, if it's not Doraemon, would be this outside Asia. Aside from Doraemon, only a few series based off their work received English dubs that were popular in Asia: Ninja Hattori, Perman, and Chimpui.